The Morning After
by Mr. Cereal
Summary: The morning after a night of drunken debauchery that he cannot remember, Jiraiya wakes up to find Tsunade behind a couch and a person who may or may not be Orochimaru in his bed.
1. The Morning After

Jiraiya woke up with his face pressed down against musty hardwood. It took him a moment to realize that he was in his bedroom. He must have fallen down at some point in the night, though his feet at least were still in bed. Then the migraine hit him with full force, so painfully and suddenly that he saw stars in his eyes.

Awkwardly he propped himself up and then onto a sitting position, and sighed in relief as the blood ebbed away from his head. As he wiggled his toes to get the feeling back in his legs, he tried to recall what had happened the night before.

The Konoha Spring Festival. It was coming back now. He also remembered a free flow of wine, which explained why his mouth tasted like a Suna-nin had taken a dump in it. He winced as he tested each of his muscles in turn – first torso, then the limbs, as per protocol. He felt like he was fifty years old. He should have listened to Tsunade about taking it easy after that mission, but she never took her own advice anyway. _Not since Nawaki._

When he stood up he was pleasantly surprised to find that there was somebody else in his bed. A lean, graceful figure sprawled asleep in his bed under the covers, her sleek dark hair partially obscuring a pale bare shoulder peeking out the top of a blanket.

Jiraiya grinned, giving himself a mental pat on the back. _Now if only I could remember any of it…_ he thought idly as he shambled out of his bedroom. There was a Konoha headband on the floor that wasn't his, so she was probably a shinobi too. He froze in mid-step. There was something niggling at the back of his head but his hangover was making pinning it down very difficult.

The long black hair, the skin so pale it almost shone- _Oh, gods._ He felt a creeping mortification as the possibility dawned on him.

"No," he muttered. "No no."

"No what?" someone asked. Tsunade's head had appeared from behind a couch, her asymmetrical hair suggesting that she had spent the night on the floor. "Ugh, put some pants on." She gave a lazy burp to punctuate her sentence.

Jiraiya blinked. _A day of many surprises. _"Tsunade? What- actually, hold on one second." He ducked back into his bedroom, squinting again at the mystery figure in his bed. Dammit. He thought he could discern a hint of feminine curves, but his thick sheets were making it hard to tell. There was one way to find out. But as Jiraiya reached out to pull the sheets away he found himself staying his hand. On one hand, if it _was_ a woman, he was extremely interested in seeing her naked. _Again, I suppose._ But on the other hand if it turned out to be snake-

"Um, Jiraiya," Tsunade began, breaking his stream of thought. At some point she had moved up beside him.

"Where the hell is Orochimaru anyway, Tsunade?" he blurted out. He tried to remember where he had last seen that pain in the ass, but it was hard to recall anything once the wine had started flowing.

"Jiraiya!" Tsunade hissed. The note of urgency in her voice cut through his hangover fog like a chakra scalpel. She pointed at the figure in his bed. "Your… friend, she isn't breathing."

Jiraiya had noticed it too, and was moving before Tsunade had finished. His hand was clammy, but the body felt cold to his touch as he groped frantically for a pulse. He heard the ornamental bells in Tsunade's hair ringing as she shook her head. "She's been dead for a while. A few hours at least."

Jiraiya exhaled slowly through his teeth. "Mother_fucker_."

Tsunade was already tugging at her elaborate bell-studded hairnet, letting her hair fall back into her default style. "I'll go and inform the old fart. You… deal with things here." Jiraiya barely heard her, but he waved his acquiescence, and she turned away wordlessly.

She paused briefly at his door. "Oh, and she _was_ a woman, by the way," Tsunade said. "Her name was Suki."

Jiraiya slumped against the foot of the bed, shaking his head. _Suki._


	2. Postmortem

"This one has putrefied quite a bit faster than usual," Yakushi Kote said dispassionately, "so I'd put these on if I were you." The Chief Medic handed Tsunade and Jiraiya a couple of surgical masks. His own surgical mask hid his face almost completely up to his eyes, which were encased in combat goggles.

Tsunade's mouth tightened in annoyance. "I've seen worse, Kote." She folded her arms around her ample chest. "As you know."

"Should I have offered it to just him?"

Jiraiya could see Tsunade struggling not to smirk. "I guess not."

Jiraiya tossed the surgical mask aside. "I'm right here, you guys."

Kote turned to him and regarded him silently with his blank mask. The implied criticism annoyed Jiraiya to no end. In this day and age where henge jutsu were commonplace and every hidden village had a comprehensive bingo book and intel specialist clans like the Yamanaka, masks were increasingly becoming affectation rather than necessity. Yet people like Hatake or Yakushi here still felt like they were somehow superior to him. _I am an S-class nin in four bingo books and a six-year ANBU veteran. How many people can say that, especially the latter?_ Jiraiya had to remind himself that, as Konoha's Chief Medical Officer, Kote was probably no slouch either.

In any case, the Chief Medic was right. It had been barely a day, and the sweet smell of decay hung so heavy in the examination room that Jiraiya could almost taste it. He fought an urge to gag at the last thought, and wondered if he should have swallowed his ego and put the mask on.

"I've already examined the body myself, so feel free to dissect away." The body was set on a gurney at the center of the room, and to his credit Kote had had the decency to cover her up with a plain shroud. As Tsunade and Jiraiya slapped on latex gloves in preparation, Kote moved to the other side of the gurney.

"What, no gloves for you?"

"Ha ha ha. Never heard that one before. Don't quit your day job." The mask was as featureless as ever, and the goggles just as impenetrable, but Jiraiya saw a twitch of irritation ripple underneath the white cloth of the mask.

Jiraiya had a sarcastic retort framed, but it stuck in his throat when Tsunade peeled the shroud from the woman's body. _Suki. Her name is Suki._ It was the first time Jiraiya had had a proper look at her. Early decomposition had bloated her face somewhat, but not so badly that Jiraiya could not see her sharp cheekbone and elfin features. Elsewhere she was slender and willowy. Only the cords of muscle on her arms hinted at the fact that Suki had once been a professional murderer.

With a jolt, Jiraiya recalled where he'd seen Suki before. He had seen her once or twice at the dumplings shop by the Hokage Monument. They had never spoken, however. Jiraiya realized with a pang of regret that he wanted to get to know this woman. How had they met? What had they liked about one another? All of a sudden Jiraiya found that he could not look at the body. Only decades of training and experience prevented him from throwing up right there. He gripped the edge of the gurney to steady himself, and forced himself to listen to the technical back-and-forth between Tsunade and Kote.

"So it was poison?" Tsunade said, running her finger down the side of Suki's body and peering at the clear slime that had collected.

"Oh, most definitely. There are no puncture wounds, and residue examination shows that the poison was administered through the ear."

"The ear? That strongly suggests that it was administered while she was asleep."

Kote nodded. "Indeed. And the poison is a volatile enzyme that breaks down within ten hours. I've managed to extract and analyzed some of the poison before it decayed, and well," Kote said, reaching up a hand to touch the bridge of his goggles, "I am extremely impressed. I have to have a larger sample to confirm, but I think the poison is activated and fed by chakra. And, um, sexual arousal."

Jiraiya was startled. "You're saying that _I_ killed her?"

Tsunade's bark of laughter was abrupt and she contained it quickly. "Well hey," Tsunade turned to Jiraiya with barely suppressed bemusement, "you do know how to find it without a map. Good job."

He scowled at her. "Har har. Come on. Show some respect."

"Aww," Tsunade said in her best baby voice, "is this your first dead body, little genin?"

For a split second Jiraiya seriously considered bringing up Nawaki. But only for a split second. His friendship with Tsunade was worth more than that. As if she'd read his mind, Tsunade immediately looked more contrite. Not that she would ever apologise in so many words. But the princess was sorry, and that was good enough for Jiraiya.

She also had a point. It wasn't as though Jiraiya was some sort of innocent at this. He had killed hundreds of people – men or women, retirees or children, shinobi or civilian. He even had under his belt more than two dozen confirmed kills of shinobi who had once called themselves Konoha-nin. Nor was he a stranger to friends dying. No one becomes jounin without having a pile of dead comrades who were not quite good enough. _Or lucky enough._

Kote coughed politely. "There _is_ one more interesting thing I think you should see. On your side, the nape of the neck."

There were three small but definitely distinct dark blotches on the nape of Suki's neck, each about equidistant to one another. Tsunade drew in a deep breath, though whatever it was she and Kote saw eluded Jiraiya.

I prodded at the blotches. "Are these br-"

"No, they are not bruises," Kote said, in a tone that said it was the most obvious thing in the world. He sighed and continued. "See the perfect triangular pattern of the blotches? That's typical of chakra burns, we see it usually when treating Hyuuga practicing the Jyuuken, I've seen in on the Uchiha too, once or twice."

Jiraiya frowned. "So? We already know the poison has a weird relationship with chakra. This just confirms what we already know."

"But that's not the interesting part," Tsunade said. "Notice the flaring from the blotches. They are all clockwise."

Jiraiya drew in a deep breath and immediately regretted it. "Following so far, but _so what_?"

Tsunade began to speak again, but Kote cut her off. "_Basically_," he said with exaggerated slowness, "what all this amounts to is that this enclosed chakra loop acts like a seal that amplifies chakra exponentially."

"Well if the poison feeds on chakra, wouldn't that just kill you faster anyway?"

Kote shrugged. "That's my best guess on what happened to her. It's brilliant, really," he said, prodding the body absently with a pencil. "A miniscule amount with a miniscule effect that builds up slowly, imperceptibly… until it's too late."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: _So. Sorry I trolled you guys with the summary. This was super fun to write but it's also something I cranked out in maybe ten hours. So do tell me if any parts don't work, or any disparity from the canon. I've basically given up trying to set a proper time period to this. As of now it's probably set after Nawaki dies but before Dan appears in Tsunade's flashback. There's more to come, likely two more chapters to conclude._**


	3. Dark Leaves

"Tsunade-hime," Jiraiya said as the door of the Hokage's Tower slammed shut behind them, "do you get the feeling that old man Sarutobi is avoiding us?"

Tsunade shot the door a backwards glance. "He knows something about this Suki case he's not telling us. When I went in to tell him about the Suki incident in the morning he was doing that thing with his pipe the whole time."

Jiraiya scowled. Their sensei was in many ways an inscrutable man, but when you know someone for two decades one picks up on little tics. Chewing on the lip of his pipe was one of the Sarutobi-sensei's few tells. If the old man was doing that, something was definitely up. "Are you sure?"

Tsunade gave only a terse nod in reply.

"Fuck," he muttered. "Fuck."

"What happens now?" Her voice was soft. With a jolt of surprise Jiraiya realized that Tsunade was deferring to his judgement.

"This changes nothing," he said after a moment, deciding. "It just means we have to tread softer."

He stopped and glanced at Tsunade. The expression on her face reflected his own uneasiness. It wasn't that Jiraiya was afraid of going against the old man. He had done so before, and would do it again if he thought he was in the right. So had Tsunade. But if it troubled even the old man… Jiraiya pushed the thought aside. He would get to the bottom of this. He owed Suki at least that much.

They reached their destination in brooding silence. Ichiraku Ramen was a new ramen corner stall that had only just opened within the past year. Jiraiya had since then found himself eating a lot of meals there. And why not? It was cheap, tasty, and young Ichiraku was always friendly.

There was only one other customer, a civilian, at the stall. After placing their order with Ichiraku, they both nursed their hot tea as Jiraiya considered how to approach this investigation. "I think we're probably done with the morgue."

Tsunade was apparently thinking about the same thing, for she nodded immediately. "What about your place?"

"Haven't been there since I got Suki out in the morning,"

"Has anyone else been there?"

"Not that I know of. And I have a number of booby traps set up around the entrances."

"Great. I'll ask Kibuka and Shiremaru to have a sniff around."

Jiraiya nodded, peering intently into the tea, following the languid swirling of the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. It didn't make much sense. Suki had lived alone. If someone had wanted to murder Suki (which admittedly was a shinobi occupational hazard), why do it then, the one night when she had company? Had Jiraiya been the actual target of the assassination? The personal manner in which it was done seemed to suggest otherwise. She wasn't a discovered spy either, or the ANBU that had been sent to kill her would have liquefied the body.

The tea leaves had settled so Jiraiya shook it lightly, and the leaves began their dance again. He had a vague niggling feeling about this whole affair that he could not shake, like he was missing something that was right under his nose.

"Do you realize the potential for this?" Tsunade said suddenly.

Jiraiya blinked and looked up from his cup. "What?"

"That recursive chakra seal we found on Suki's neck."

"Another sneaky way to kill someone." He shrugged. Jiraiya himself knew a hundred and one ways to dispatch someone covertly, and he wasn't even a stealth specialist like Hatake. Not to mention what a medic like Tsunade probably had in her repertoire. "Big deal."

"No, _really_ think about it," Tsunade said, annoyed, and not for the first time that day Jiraiya felt like a moron. "The seal amplifies chakra massively. If there was some way we could somehow… control it-"

Jiraiya snorted. _That._ "-and not die of it, you mean? Or have you forgotten that part? Don't tell me you're seriously thinking about this." It was a pipe dream that was almost as old as ninjutsu itself. He had heard rumours that Takigakure had some sort of 'hero water' that enabled its user to fight with the strength of many shinobi, but even in the rumours death was the price of the temporary burst of power. Soldier pills did basically the same thing too, on a more modest scale, but even there an hour under its chakra-boosting effects meant two more hours of recovery time later.

Tsunade shook her head ruefully. "I guess not."

At that point Ichiraku came up with their ramen, chicken fillet for her, black pepper tofu for him. The young stall owner paused after serving them up. "Jiraiya-san, Tsunade-san, I, ah… hate to say this, but you two smell-" he leaned in closer to whisper, "-like death."

Jiraiya noticed that the civilian had moved to the other side of the stall, apparently trying to eat his ramen and breathe through his mouth at the same time. He gave Ichiraku an apologetic shrug. "Sorry."

"We'll be out of here as soon as we can," Tsunade assured the stall owner.

With hot food in front of him, Jiraiya suddenly realized how ravenous he was. He wasted no time feeling guilty about stinking up the ramen joint, and began wolfing his ramen down. Having some food in his belly made the world seem like a better place, and he felt, if not completely like his cheerful self again, then at least content. A thought occurred to him as he attacked his second bowl that made him grin a little. "So," he said with a mouth full of ramen, "Tsunade-hime. Tell me true. Did we do it last night?"

Tsunade grimaced. "Listen, frogboy, if we need to have this conversation every time we drink, you need to find yourself a new drinking buddy."

"So… is that a-"

"Never before, never will," she said, shaking her head vehemently. "Never never."

"The princess doth protest-"

"Oh, shut up," she snapped, but Jiraiya noticed that she was refusing to meet his eye.

He slurped up the last of his ramen. "Toads, by the way," he said when he was done.

"What?"

"I summon toads, not frogs."

"Whatever. Pay up, frogboy."

Jiraiya lit up. "Does this mean that this is a date?"

She rolled her eyes. "For your own portion, moron. I've paid for mine already."

He shook his head as he dug out his wallet. "One of these days, Tsunade-hime."


	4. Revelation

The Inuzuka Jiraiya found waiting outside his place was not Kibuka, but a kid of fifteen or sixteen.

"Where's Kibuka?"

"My mom's away on a mission," the kid said, twirling a kunai idly, "but I'm your girl. I'm Kana."

Jiraiya hadn't asked, but he supposed it made sense that Kibuka had a kid. "Of course. Come in," he said, forming a half-tiger seal to dispel the genjutsu. His door faded away while a section of wall a few feet away shimmered and revealed the real door.

"Cool," Kana whispered. He had no doubt she was filing that trick away for future use. Jiraiya didn't mind. He had been meaning to change up his door security anyway.

"So Tsunade briefed you onwhat I need here, right?"

"Detect any foreign scent or chakra traces? Yeah," she said absently as she moved slowly around the house. "I'm supposed to ignore Tsunade-sama, Orochimaru-sama and your scent, correct?"

"And Suki."

Kana shot him a look. "Yes, her too."

There would usually be a lot more strange scents than that since Jiraiya regularly brought women home, but he'd been on a three-month long mission, and had returned just in time for the festival. He supposed he should be grateful about that, at least. He didn't relish having to interview every woman he'd slept with in an average month.

She came out of the bathroom with her nose screwed in disgust. "Well, that's all of it. I didn't detect any hint of anyone else. Even shadow clones leave a scent. Whoever did this was very good. Had to be to leave no trace like that."

"Are you sure?"

"Very. I'm one of the better trackers in the family," Kana said with a hint of smugness.

Jiraiya scowled. This could only mean that they were dealing with an S-rank stealth specialist. The good news, at least, was that narrowed the field of suspects down considerably. There were not very many S-rank stealth specialists in Konoha, or the world for that matter.

His train of thought was interrupted by the realization that Kana had leaned in very close, and was apparently sniffing his neck on tiptoe.

"Uh, Kana-"

Jiraiya jumped when she buried her face in the nape of his neck. When Jiraiya pushed her head away from his neck she grabbed his head and kissed him full on the mouth.

"N-now wait a minute!" Jiraiya said, extricating himself from the kiss.

Her cheeks were flushed, and there was a playful grin on her face. "Come on. I know your reputation. Tell me you don't want this."

Jiraiya backed away a few steps. "Listen…" He thought about how best to handle this. "Your mother would kill me."

Kana threw up her hands in exasperation. "Who cares what that bitch thinks? I passed my chuunin exams." She leaned into Jiraiya again, pursing her lips in what he supposed was a seductive pout. "I'm old enough to make my own decisions-"

"-but not old enough for me," Jiraiya interrupted, pushing her away. "I like women with proper curves. Come back in a few years, kid." He ruffled her hair to soften his words.

Jiraiya knew that it was exactly the wrong thing to do, almost as he did it. He saw the slap coming but made no effort to stop it, and it connected with a resounding crack. He probably deserved that, he reflected as Kana stalked away with wounded pride. While she would never be as well-endowed as Tsunade, Kana wasn't all that lacking in the curves department. The more mortifying truth was that he had slept with her mother only last month. Kibuka would never forgive him.

Kana slammed the door so hard on her way out that motes of dust floated down from the rafters. One flake landed on his nose, and as he swept it away with his hand, he saw something that made his breath catch in his throat. It was no ordinary flake of dust. He had seen this before. He brought it closer to inspect it, and sure enough, it was a piece of snake scale.

_Orochimaru._ The last time he had seen it was during a particularly thorny infiltration mission in the Land of Rice with his fellow Sennin. If Tsunade was right Orochimaru was a month into a deep-strike mission that was to take him six months. The pure white scale gleamed a little as he shifted it on his finger. The scale was brand-new too, less than a day old if he had to guess. Jiraiya felt a chill in his veins as he realized the implication.

He shook his head. Orochimaru was a heartless bastard, but he wouldn't do this. Jiraiya scowled at the piece of scale on his finger. _Why would he?_ Everything made sense but the motive. He groaned. He needed a pair of fresh eyes on this. Tsunade would know what to make of it.

* * *

><p>Tsunade's face hardened as she digested his words. "What are you saying?"<p>

"I'm saying-" Jiraiya exhaled slowly, a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "I don't know. You tell me."

Tsuande did not speak to him for a whole minute. When she did there was doubt in her voice. "Why- why would he do this?"

Jiraiya ground his teeth. "I don't know." It was a question he had asked himself over and over again on the way to Tsunade's place. "He's always been a weirdo." But even to his own ears that explanation lacked conviction.

"But you're his friend. _We're_ his friends. He wouldn't do this," Tsunade said weakly. But she was chewing her lip, and Jiraiya could see that she was thinking about Nawaki. That night his body was brought before them.

Jiraiya rested his head in his palm, massaging his bleary eyes. "We shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. Maybe he has an explanation for this."

Jiraiya could tell, though, that Tsunade's heart had ossified. "Yes," she muttered. "Yes, we owe him that much."


	5. Denouement

Jiraiya peered down the shaft. It dissolved into pitch-black about ten metres down, giving it the illusion of being bottomless. It had taken him more than a day to track Orochimaru to this abandoned inn at the outskirts of Konoha. There was no question that Orochimaru was down there, or had been there in the past few hours. The fresh scale in his hand left not a doubt in his mind about it.

Jiraiya considered whether to fetch Tsunade and tell her that he had found Orochimaru, but decided against it. This was personal between him and snake-boy. Tsunade would make it about Nawaki, and it would get out of hand like it always did, when it was about Nawaki. Not such a good thing in an enclosed space.

The first shadow clone down the shaft was shredded by a dense network of razor wire. The second met its end with corrosive acid in its face. Jiraiya flinched as the shadow clone dispelled and its experience flooded back through his mind. The third clone narrowly avoided the fangs of a dozen poisonous snakes launched from a hidden niche only to get blown up by removing the seal on an explosive tag.

When the fourth clone dispelled itself, Jiraiya knew that it had gotten past all the defenses into this secret lair of Orochimaru's. He carefully navigated himself past the spent and dismantled traps into what seemed to be the main chamber of the lair. It was pitch dark but there was a pervasive putrefaction underpinning the usual underground smell of wet soil. Clutching his hands together in a tiger seal, he performed a toad eye jutsu.

His breath stopped in his throat as the surroundings came into focus. It was a chamber perhaps as large as Sarutobi-sensei's office. That was where all resemblance ended, however. It seemed to be a combination of torture dungeon and autopsy theatre. Mangled bodies hung on wall-mounted hooks like meat at a butcher. Shinobi headbands hung off most of them, some with the symbols of foreign villages, but others, he noted with mounting horror, with the stylised leaf of Konoha. Jiraiya felt his hair bristle when he realized that some of the bodies were moving faintly and moaning.

"See anything you like, idiot?"

Jiraiya pivoted around, kunai in hand. Orochimaru's gaunt frame was relaxed, a familiar sneer on his face. Even in the pitch darkness, he seemed unnaturally pale.

"What have you done?"

Orochimaru spread his hands. "All this? It's necessary. Success is near at hand."

"What?" Jiraiya growled.

"Immortality, Jiraiya!" Orochimaru's voice, high with glee, reverberated off the damp walls of the chamber. "The ability to leap from body to body as easily as shedding clothes. The true God of Shinobi is one that conquers death!"

"And Suki, she deserved to die, so that you may live past your time?"

For a moment, the name did not seem to register on Orochimaru. Then he shook his head. "You're not such a moron after all," he said, smirking. "But no, I didn't kill her for this."

The barefaced admission threw Jiraiya off. He hadn't expected his teammate to come right out and admit his guilt. There were a million things he wanted to shout at Orochimaru, but instead only one word passed his lips.

"Why?"

"Just to see if I could," Orochimaru said with cool detachment.

With a wordless cry of fury Jiraiya launched himself at his teammate. Orochimaru made no attempt to dodge, and Jiraiya's fist connected with the pasty flesh of his face. As Jiraiya drew back his fist for another punch, Orochimaru began to shake with unrestrained mirth, a deep-throated, maniacal cackle bursting from his mouth. His elongated incisors and lolling head made him look more like a snake than Jiraiya could ever remember.

"You idiot. Always charging in without a plan." Before Jiraiya's eyes, Orochimaru lost definition and dissolved into a mass of small snakes, which slithered away in every direction. Jiraiya lunged madly at them, but caught only one in his hand.

"Fuck." Jiraiya fell to his knees with a soft slosh. "FUCK!" He punched the wet ground impotently, his fist clenched so hard that he felt his nails draw blood.

A faint rumbling shook him out of his rage. As he scanned the room for threats, the rumbling became progressively louder. The chamber seemed to contract fractionally, and then the ceiling and walls were falling apart everywhere.

_Shit._ Jiraiya made a mad dash for the entrance of the chamber, trying not to think about the poor souls on the walls behind him. With any luck the collapse would kill them and put them out of their misery. He pulled himself out of the shaft just as it closed up behind him.

Jiraiya scowled at where the shaft used to be. It was, no doubt, some sort of earth jutsu of Orochimaru. The ground had sunk a few inches, but otherwise there was no trace of the chamber ever having existed.

* * *

><p>"Sensei-"<p>

Sarutobi-sensei averted his gaze. "Let it go, Jiraiya-san," he said softly.

Jiraiya was taken aback. Sarutobi-sensei was not usually one for honorifics. Jiraiya could only recall twice in all these years when Sarutobi-sensei had spoken to him in that tone, or called him 'Jiraiya-san'. The first time had been accompanied by the most oppressive killing intent he had ever experienced, after Jiraiya's insubordination had cost the life of a fellow genin. He loved the old man like his father, but to this day he felt a reflexive cringe whenever he thought of it. The second time, years later, had been different. Jiraiya had caught his sensei on the awning of one of Konoha's many bathhouses spying on the women bathing underneath, and he had begged Jiraiya not to tell his wife the Lady Biwako.

Jiraiya could see from Sensei's sad smile that this was one of the latter situations. "You _knew_?"

"I… suspected," Sarutobi-sensei said, wincing.

Jiraiya tossed crushed snake he had been clutching in one hand at Sarutobi-sensei. It slid across the Hokage's table, leaving a bright trail of blood across the desktop.

For a long moment, Sarutobi-sensei did not speak. "We are at war, Jiraiya-san," he said finally. "We need people like Orochimaru, who will terrify our enemies and do things we'd rather not do."

"Some of the victims I saw in his chamber were Konoha-nin. For Konoha's sake, this needs to stop."

"For Konoha, or for Suki?"

Jiraiya slammed the desk hard. "Does it fucking matter?"

"No." Sarutobi-sensei met his gaze, and Jiraiya could see the sorrow in his eyes. "He is like me, you know. The last scion of our clans, and exceptional prodigies in our time. I thought I saw in him a younger me. Perhaps that's why I let it go this far."

His sensei seemed to have something else to say, so Jiraiya waited for him to say it.

"I would ask you to keep this quiet for the moment," Jiraiya saw how much it hurt his sensei to say what he was going to say next. "I will deal with him personally."

"Are you asking, or ordering?" _As our sensei, or as Hokage?_

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

Sarutobi-sensei nodded, understanding. "Please."


	6. Epilogue

Tsunade betrayed little emotion when Jiraiya told her about Orochimaru and his underground lair. If he knew his princess though, she was getting shit-faced right now in any of the half-dozen bars she frequented.

Jiraiya didn't feel like drinking. He never understood why Tsunade (or a number of other shinbi he knew) drowned their troubles in alcohol. For him alcohol was for celebration. That didn't leave him with much to take his mind off with.

The wooden block splintered in a spiral pattern as it came into contact with the Rasengan. _Dammit._ He had been working on perfecting his student's technique, but it was a lot harder than it looked. Still, training helped him siphon some of his restlessness productively.

He shook his head. That was only a half-truth. The full truth was that he was avoiding the report that he knew he had to write. But he could put it off no longer, and there would be no better time than now. He was making no progress with the Rasengan. Minato was back, but had understandably wanted to spend more time with the Uzumaki girl than with his perverted old sensei.

So he finally sat down at his desk and got to work. He started the report with the festival, recounting, as far as his memory would allow, the circumstances of the night he met Suki.

Even though he could hardly be said to have known Suki, Jiraiya found his pen hesitating. He threw down the pen and leaned back in his chair until the back of the chair found its familiar groove in the wall. _She didn't deserve to die. Not like this._ He made his decision as he scowled at the crack in his ceiling.

The words flowed effortlessly once he began, and he soon found that he had a flair for it. From beginning to end, it was a comic tale of flamboyant seduction and bisexual identity farces, of hilarious misunderstandings and drunken debauchery. But most of all, it was a tale with a happy ending. Finishing the last sentence felt cathartic. He knew that in a few days it would seem amateurish, puerile, but that didn't matter.

He thought for a while about what his story should be called, but he found himself drawing a blank. Finally he threw up his arms in resignation. He still had that damn report to finish. On the top margin of the first page he scrawled down the first three words that came into his head:

ICHA ICHA PARADISE

Jiraiya chuckled to himself. It would have to do for a temporary title.

FIN


End file.
